WCape's good story queried

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2014-02-21 18:15

(Photo: GCIS)

Cape Town - Western Cape premier Helen Zille's claim of having "the best story to tell" was queried by provincial ANC leader Marius Fransman on Friday.

"The reality is, as a nation, South Africa has done well... That good story is to be told everywhere in South Africa, including the Western Cape," he said after the premier's delivery of the state-of-the-province address in Cape Town.

Zille earlier said progress had been made over the past five years in realising the vision of an open-opportunity society for all.

"I believe that this is the Western Cape story. And it really is the good story to tell," she said to jeers from the opposition benches.

"We have the best story to tell."

An opposition member shouted "that's plagiarism", in reference to the African National Congress's election phrase "We have a good story to tell".

Fransman said Zille claimed the success of the Saldanha Industrial Development Zone as her own, when it was Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies who had negotiated these deals.

He said a pilot project to provide free basic electricity to farmworkers in the Hex River Valley next year, in partnership with Eskom, could also not be considered a purely provincial project.

The project could only go ahead next February if R12.5m funding was secured from national Treasury and the national departments of energy, and rural development and land affairs.

"The question must rather be: What money has the provincial government invested in those projects? And the answer would be nought," Fransman said.

He said the good story Zille wanted to portray only applied to a select few.

"The bad story... is when people have to fight for toilets in the Western Cape. Farmworkers have to fight against evictions."

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